


Warp and Weft

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Fate Threads, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Vax supervises Molly watching the M9 on TV in the afterlife
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2019-11-12 13:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: “Yes, well” said the raven, tying a neat knot on a frayed thread, now connected to two others. “My mother was a seamstress.”“…Forgive me if I say that that explains absolutely nothing.”The raven frowned, letting go of the threads and turning to Molly curiously. “You’re a persistent one, aren’t you. You’re free now…” he cocked his head, looking Molly over again. “Shouldn’t you be on your way?”“…Should I be?”





	1. The End

First there was pain, pain bursting from the middle of his chest and expanding outwards until it burned to the very extremities of him. Pain that was too much, he thought with his last shred of consciousness, to be borne while his body still lived.

Molly’s eyes were open, he had the impression he couldn’t shut them if he tried, but still he was blind, his body and his very soul in too much pain to focus on anything else. Surely it must be tearing him apart, but he couldn’t remember what had happened one moment to the next, but surely no one could bear such pain without -

\- _Dying_. The thought rang his mind like a bell, and at the very moment he had it, the pain suddenly, unexpectedly, stopped.

After that there was nothingness, for a while. 

And then there was _something_ again, though not something that he recognised as familiar. He felt his eyes open, though he had not realised they had been closed. He had a disturbing sense that there was no continuity to his body here, wherever he was.

 _Where_ being the biggest question, he thought. He was regaining his senses – he thought – but they somehow felt different to how senses had felt before. He had thought he was used to total darkness, but here the blackness was total and complete. It was not the nothingness from before, though; this darkness felt _full_ , somehow, rather than empty, and for some reason gently warm.

It was only then that Molly realised there was something wrapped around his body, tight and restricting his movements. It felt almost entangling, as though he was bound by threads that stretched and twisted as he began to struggle, but would not yield. For a brief moment, blind panic raced through him, as something tugged in his memory; the feeling of being crushed by the weight of earth? But no, this wasn’t that. This was on all sides, enmeshing him like a fly caught in a spider’s web, and the more he struggled and fought against it, the worse it seemed to become. He cried out, but he couldn’t hear his own voice, threads of something covering his mouth, pulling tight between his teeth as he opened his jaw to scream.

Suddenly, though, he heard someone else’s voice, close at hand.

“Hey. Hey there, it’s okay. Please – ow! – please can you stop kicking and flailing for a moment, so I can help you?”

Molly, to his own surprise, did stop, out of sheer confusion. A moment later though, there were gentle hands on his arms and legs and tail, untangling whatever was binding and suspending him. He started in alarm at that, but felt a firm but gentle grip on his wrist, neither cool nor warm.

“Hey. You know, you’re not making my job any easier. I’m trying to help you, and if you’d just stay _still_ …” Molly felt a tug, and then he was free, tumbling forward out of whatever had been binding him tight and into someone’s arms. He felt something come up and wrap around him, a hand patting the back of his head gently as he instinctively tried to struggle once more. “There. There now. You’re fine. You’re okay.” The person – whoever they were – released him from the embrace, drawing back to inspect him, and it was only then that Molly got a proper look at his rescuer.

The first thing he noticed was that though this person looked humanoid – a rather pretty half-elf, in fact – there was just something about them that didn’t _quite_ match that. It was a uniquely odd experience, with his eyes taking in the sight of this half-elf with his nice dark hair and his black leather armour, dark brows arched in consternation as he looked Molly over carefully.

But when Molly looked at him, he couldn’t seem to help but think _this is a raven_ , though this stranger gave no outward appearance of being one. Except, Molly thought, for the pair of huge, black-feathered wings that came from their back, which were now arching forward to wrap around Molly. Odd, he thought vaguely, that he hadn’t noticed those to start with. Or maybe not so odd. Maybe that, and the fact that he couldn’t shake the notion that this person was a raven, and maybe also whatever had just happened to him, were all completely normal when one was dead. Not that he could remember it from last time.

 _Oh yeah_. He was probably dead. Perhaps he should address that. Maybe he could ask this raven about it. He should probably ask him about it.

“Why are you a raven?” blurted Molly, instead.

“That’s…a long story” said the raven, with a quiet laugh. It was quite a nice laugh, Molly thought.

“Will you tell it?”

The raven tilted his head – exactly like a real bird, which this person definitely was at least some of the time, Molly thought – and considered him. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, appearing to change his mind and glancing over Molly’s shoulder. “I can…but bear with me for just a moment?” he said, pulling his wings close to his back and gently moving past Molly.

“Guess I don’t really have a choice” he said, folding his arms over his chest with a frown. He wasn’t wearing his coat, Molly realised, which made him feel worse about the whole situation. Still, he squinted into the vaguely-rendered shadow-void that surrounded him to see the raven stooped forward a little, standing very still as though waiting for something, or listening at a keyhole.

It was then that Molly noticed the threads, and when he saw them, he wondered how he had not before. They were all around, criss-crossing through space, tangling with each other here and there, occasionally braided or woven into strange, abstract structures that nevertheless sparked something at the back of his mind. Forms he could only _almost_ put a name to. Some of them were broken, hanging loose, and some were fraying, and there were so many of them, extending further than he could see in every direction. Including, rather disquietingly, downwards, and it was unclear to Molly exactly what he was standing on, if anything.

He realised that this was what had been entangling him before; the raven stood next to what looked like a tangled clump or snarl in the endless network, inspecting it very carefully, his long, careful fingers tugging gently at pieces here and there.

He watched, as the raven frowned, then reached up and plucked at one of the threads very gently, as though testing its tension. He plucked it again, with a little more force, and cocked his head like he was listening intently, as the thread vibrated like the string of a lute. Then he put his finger on that thread as though marking his place, and reached a short distance to pluck another one, then another, listening each time.

“Uh… dare I ask what you’re trying to achieve here?” asked Molly, after a while.

The raven didn’t look at him, but Molly saw a slight smile tug the corner of his mouth. “You could” he said. He plucked another thread, tugged yet another just a little taut. “It just takes a bit of trial and error, but…” he seemed to be concentrating very hard, his tongue clamped between his teeth, “…when you’ve been doing this for a while, you can kind of…” he tested the tension of another thread with his finger, letting it go carefully, “…see where they lead. Or not _see_ , exactly, but…hear…sense. It’s like divine sense but….” he made a complicated gesture that Molly couldn’t make head nor tail of. “Longer. Twisty. You know.”

Molly squinted. “Not…really?”

“…Fuck. Sorry, I’ve never really tried to _explain_ it to anyone before.” He tapped his chin. “Come to think of it, I don’t know if you have the senses to understand it.”

“That’s fair.” Molly looked around, as the raven picked up thread that had come loose with his struggling, taking out a small dagger and deftly cutting through a few more that had become hopelessly tangled. Then he began to reattach them, with deliberate care and obvious experience, though by what logic or instinct he knew which thread connected to which, Molly had no idea. “You’re good at…whatever that is” he ventured. “You know where all the threads go.”

“Yes, well” said the raven, tying a neat knot on a frayed thread, now connected to two others. “My mother was a seamstress.”

“…Forgive me if I say that that explains absolutely nothing.”

The raven frowned, letting go of the threads and turning to Molly curiously. “You’re a persistent one, aren’t you. You’re free now…” he cocked his head, looking Molly over again. “Shouldn’t you be on your way?”

“… _Should_ I be?”

“…I’m not sure” admitted the raven. “It’s not very often that someone gets caught up like thar. I’ve only seen it a few times, but each of those people were quick to carry on along the way, to the next place.” He plucked a few more threads. “…Maybe I should ask Purvan…he’s been here longer than me” he said, more too himself than to Molly. “Don’t want to bother the boss over this…”

Molly couldn’t help himself; he snorted. “Purvan? That’s his name?”

The raven gave him the side-eye for just a moment, before letting out a giggle. “I have some friends you’d get on really well with” he said under his breath, going back to detangling the threads.

“…Here?” Molly looked around doubtfully.

“No, not here, unfortunately.”

“That also raises an excellent point. Where…” - it didn’t feel like the correct terminology, as this didn’t feel like a _place_ exactly – “is here?”

The raven turned around and looked at him, sheathing the dagger at his belt again. “How much…do you remember? About just before you came here?”

Molly blinked. He thought about it for a moment. It was oddly hard, thinking back beyond the point he remembered arriving here; it was as though looking back in his memory was like peering through thick, irregular glass.

But then, didn’t he have enough experience with such things? He frowned, forcing his way through to the most recent thing he remembered – it felt right to do so, it felt like something he _wanted_ to do this time. He wanted to _know_ , for better or for worse.

And then, all of a sudden, there it was.

 _Ah, yes_.

Desperation, fear, snow against his face and cold wind biting at him, burning away the heat of his anger as he struck out wildly, a face leering down at him, a smile filled with cruelty. Firelight, glancing off the hooked blade of a glaive, already slick with gore, and the smell of it, fresh blood steaming in the frigid air. Perhaps that part had just been his imagination. Or perhaps not. He remembered he had felt sick, had felt furious, imagining the barbed metal it sinking into his friends’ flesh. _No_ , he had thought, as he had reached for that power inside him, felt it take hold, felt the familiar tug at his own life force. He remembered gritting his teeth through it, clinging on even as a wave of necrotic dizziness had threatened to bring him to his knees.

Everything had happened so fast.

He had been on the ground before he noticed his legs giving way, the hot blood sluicing down his neck in strange counterpoint to the frozen ground and churned-up snow beneath him.

The glaive had been above him, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t roll out the way, could only watch, as that terrible mouth curved into a smile, bringing the blade down. Sound had dissolved into a roaring, but he could still see, and he had forced himself to watch, unable to look away, _until_ -

He remembered, just barely, seeing his final breath gust out of him in a frigid cloud. The next thing he remembered after that was ending up here, tangled in threads. But he knew what had happened. He blinked, pressing his eyes closed. One hand, he realised, had come up to touch the middle of his chest, but there was nothing there; only unbroken skin, warm and ridged with scars, just the same as usual. No bloody wound, no blade piercing all the way through him.

“…I died” he said slowly. “…Again.”

The raven nodded, hands clasped rather awkwardly in front of him. “Sorry.” He spun the dagger between his fingers, apparently unconsciously. “And I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but as best as I can tell from the way these threads are tangled, it’s that _again_ part that’s causing the trouble here. Especially because I’ve never seen you before. And I see all the…complicated cases that pass through.” He poked Molly in the middle of the chest with the rounded pommel of his dagger. “ _That’s_ what’s confusing me. So…you might be here for…a while, until I sort this out.” He extended his hand. “I’m Vax, by the way. You probably have questions.”

“Yes…” Molly took the hand and shook it, rather dazedly. He had a million questions, worries, and things that quite frankly made him want to walk outside and scream in an alleyway, an option that he was sure was unavailable to him at present. But all of it together was just…so much, and what came out of his mouth instead was, “I’m Mollymauk Tealeaf. Molly to my friends. And I suppose we’re friends now, hmm?”

* * *

“Okay, I understand the part about the Raven Queen. I think. But what about this place? Where are we now?” Molly gestured at the threads all around them. They seemed to shift on their own occasionally, catching on and twisting about each other. Occasionally, without an apparent cause, one would snap. “And what are these things that I got caught up in?”

“Well, I’ll try to explain it to you the way She explained it to me. These are fate threads. They just… do this sometimes.”

“…Again, that explains nothing.”

Vax sighed. “So, sometimes, there’s someone whose life is tangled up with a lot of others’ fates, or who’s very important to the fate of the world running the course on which it’s currently heading. They might not be anyone special or important, but through some series of weird events and coincidences, it just so happens that their life will be the cause of a whole bunch of different fateful moments, which, all together, are enough to change everything.”

“…Okay.”

“And then, say that person dies, unexpectedly. The threads then have to all…” Vax scrunched up his face a little, making a complicated gesture with his hands, “…rearrange at once, I guess? The fates of the people who were close to that person have to rearrange and bend and twist and everything that was going to happen involving them all shifts around. It’s, to put it mildly, a terrible mess back here. And sometimes, the spirit of the person in question can get all tangled up in it as they pass through this in-between place, to the Astral Plane.”

“….Is that what happened to you?” Molly hazarded.

Vax gave him an odd look. “It’s what happened to _you_.”

Molly blinked. “But…but I’m not - ”

“Not special or important?”

“Yeah. …Well. I’m plenty special and important to my family, but it’s not like my existence will change the world any - …no?”

Vax was shaking his head. “No. No, that’s not how this works. Everyone _can_ potentially change the world, no matter who they are. Small changes can become big ones, and I’m afraid it’s not always easy to tell what will or will not just royally fuck things up.” He frowned. “Besides, if I understand the situation right, then several life paths have just changed, specifically those of the people that you were with.” He frowned, concentrating a moment as he tugged lightly on another thread. “…Oh. It seems that your life is completely tangled up with these people’s, and that this group is, or will be, very important to…” he frowned deeper, “…Everything? The fate of the world, I think?” He looked at Molly. “Does that surprise you?”

“…No.”

Vax nodded, smiling a little wistfully, Molly thought. “Right. So, things were course-correcting after your death, and they got a little bit tangled up.”

“What does that mean for my friends, though?” asked Molly. All he could think about was the fight he had left; he looked around him surreptitiously; he couldn’t see any of the others caught up in the threads too, but that meant nothing, for all he knew. “Do they… _did_ they survive?” He felt better about being dead, if it meant that Caleb, Nott, Beau and Keg got out, especially if they were somehow able to rescue Jester, Fjord and Yasha. But right now, even the first of those things seemed unlikely. “If they’re not here, does that mean they got out alive?”

“…I suppose, probably?” said Vax. “What were you doing? If I may ask?”  
Molly ground his teeth. “We were fighting some… _really_ fucking evil people.”

Vax nodded. “I understand.” He hesitated, just a moment, looking over Molly carefully. “…There might be something I can do to help you.”

Molly’s eyes widened. “You can send me back?”

“No! No, no, nothing like that.” Vax looked genuinely apologetic, as Molly’s shoulders slumped. “What I can do though, is _show_ you.”

* * *

Some time later, Molly watched with growing anticipation as Vax tugged on some more threads; they moved under his hands of their own accord, twisting and winding about each other like thin snakes. At first Molly thought they were just twisting into another snarl, but a moment later they began to form a more orderly pattern; they were weaving themselves into a flat panel, which seemed to flicker with colours and images, twisting over each other too fast for the eye to follow; or at least, at first. After a moment, the images became recognisable as people, places. It was an extremely odd sight, Molly thought: he could still see the pattern of the weave, so it was as though the threads of a tapestry had come to life and started moving, allowing him to watch a scene in miniature.

The picture itself, he saw, was of a bird’s eyes view, sweeping over a green landscape. It grew sharper as he watched, becoming so detailed and realistic it was almost dizzying, making his stomach lurch for a moment as though he himself were falling. But then it leveled off its dive, flying down over a cliff. On the edge was a single tree, a spot of pale pink on the edge of a cliff; a cherry tree, blossoms falling and dancing in the wind. It was a remarkably beautiful tree Molly thought, squinting so he could see more; there was someone there beside the tree too, with their back to the person – though he didn’t think that was quite the right word – watching. They stood alert on the edge of the cliff, holding a staff and dressed in a beautiful cloak that seemed to be made of bright leaves, their shock of red hair catching the spring sunlight.

Vax’s voice broke into his reverie. “Sorry!” he said. “Must have left it like that…”

“Is that who you want to see?”

“…One of several people” said Vax, a little reluctantly.

Molly’s eyes narrowed. “…Are you actually allowed to do this?”

“…Sure.” Vax began to cross over the threads, tugging and pulling at them so that the image distorted and blurred, as though he had thrown a pebble into a still pool. “I mean… technically not while I’m on the job. But this counts as work, if it helps to sort out any future messes in the threads these friends of yours might create. Putting you at ease over them is just an…added benefit.” He winked at Molly, conspiratorially.

Molly grinned; despite everything, he found himself warming to Vax. “I don’t know what your deal is. But if I had your job, I’m sure I’d get bored too.”

“I do have a lot of free time, these days.” He tugged a few threads into a different position, causing several more to shift, unknotted a knot and tied the thread to another part of the network. “I barely need to escort people, really. I’m mostly here to fix…things that get tangled up in all these fate threads, figure out where they’re supposed to go and what went wrong, and send them on their way.” He turned around to Molly, giving him a poke in the chest that was almost hard enough to be accusatory, but not quite. “Like you.”

“…I see.”

“But it’s okay” said Vax, turning back to the threads. As he tugged, another image formed: a beautiful castle flanked by a town, rising out of a forest that sprawled across steep mountain foothills. It seemed to be snowing gently, in the vision – Molly shuddered a little, deciding that, all things considered, he _really_ didn’t like snow – and once more, the point of view of the vision dived down, over the rooftops of the castle and to a courtyard. There was no sound to the vision, but in the back of his mind, Molly thought he could hear the ringing of a bell, coming from a tall tower to the side, out of the vision’s scope. He could also hear laughter, shouting, and the clash of swords; two dark-haired children were sparring with practice swords off to one side of the courtyard, while another – a slightly younger boy, he thought – was drawing a bow, aiming it at a straw target. He was watched over carefully by a woman in hunting leathers, leaning forward to reposition the child’s wrist. The view of the vision changed, and suddenly, he could see the woman’s face. He blinked in surprise, looking over at Vax, and back to her; the woman was older than him by a couple of decades, but even so, the resemblance was extraordinary.

Vax, for his part, seemed to have gotten lost in staring at the moving tapestry of threads, reaching out one hand as though to touch it. There was such a tenderness in his gaze, that it made Molly’s heart ache with a depth of emotion he hadn’t expected, and he wondered if Vax had forgotten he was there.

Molly cleared his throat, feeling a little awkward.

“Oh, uh. Sorry. It gets stuck sometimes, if you watch someone a lot.”

“Is she your…descendant?” he guessed.

Vax hid his slight start well, rearranging his expression to give Molly what was clearly supposed to be a hurt look, though he was suppressing a grin. “How old do you think I am?”

“Honestly? I have no damn idea” said Molly, truthfully.

“…She’s my sister.” He raised an eyebrow at Molly’s expression, and shrugged. “I died pretty young” he said, matter-of-fact as though he were commenting on the weather. “Not that long ago, either. …Does that surprise you?” he asked, for the second time since Molly had met him.

“I…” in truth, it had caught him by surprise: he had just assumed that anyone with a job like this must be as old as the world itself, or gone from the it so long that they had almost forgotten it. Vax was….young. A forty-something half-elf in a twenty-something’s body, who might be a bird, and spent all his time untangling threads and looking sadly out at the outside world. Well, the _body_ part was debatable, he thought, remembering where they were. But regardless he was still quite pretty, physical existence being secondary to such things.

What a life he was living, Molly thought. _Or rather, death_. He felt the urge to laugh, sudden and hysterical. This was probably a coping mechanism, he thought, detached. He had always had had some weird ones of those. “I can believe it” he said.

Vax nodded. “Enough about me, though.” In the time that had gone by, he had pulled a few more threads into new places, and now the screen flickered with many colours, both blank and swirling with abstract patterns at once. “Now, what exactly do you want to see?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do my own take on the "Molly and Vax interact in the afterlife" fic genre, because I really enjoy it. My vague intention for this fic is to make it multichapter and pretty open-ended, with Molly and Vax reacting to all of the Mighty Nein's canon adventures and occasionally tuning in to Vox Machina. So if this sounds good to you, let me know what you think/encourage me to write more :))) Also, feel free to visit me on tumblr @kanafinwhy!


	2. Silence

“One of them is Nott. Ah…Nott…the Brave?”

The picture on the screen of woven threads was shifting in abstract patterns, and Vax was frowning as he made a complicated winding around his fingers, pulling several through the knot in what looked like increasing confusion. “It feels like there’s someone there, but it’s…weirdly tenuous. It’s like the person attached to that name hasn’t been….there for very long? And it’s…mixed up with other stuff. There…seems to be another thread, tangled or spliced with this one? Look.” He pointed, indicating to Molly the thread in question: sure enough, one thread was haphazardly woven together with another, the fraying ends of the first trailing away into whisps that did not end, precisely, but vanished into the darkness where the new thread began. Vax plucked the thread, listening intently once again. “D'you happen to know a halfling called Veth Brenatto? Because I’m getting a lot of interference, overlying this Nott’s thread…”

Molly gave him a blank look.

“….I’m going to take that as a no.” Vax straightened up, the feathers of his wings ruffling in slight annoyance. “Honestly, it feels like the shit  _you’ve_  got going on, so let’s just put that aside in the pile of things we don’t understand for the moment. We can try someone else.”

“Okay, um….Caleb Widogast?”

Once again, Vax leaned forward, busying himself with the threads. As he did so, the picture on the woven panel of threads shifted and warped once more, flashing quickly enough that Molly would missed it if he had blinked. But he could have sworn that for an instant the picture rippled with red flame before swirling back into nothingness again. “Ah, yep….wait, no….the connection is…weird” said Vax, sounding deeply puzzled as the picture coalesced - snow falling on a dirt road at night - and then seemed to twist and tremble. “This one’s also quite…” he made an uncertain motion, rocking his hand from side to side. “Is…is that a new name he’s been using…? Because sometimes those can take a little while to take properly, especially if the person isn’t fully…at peace with all that makes them who they are. Not properly anchored. You know.”

“I mean….maybe?” It wouldn’t surprise him: Caleb did seem the type to use a fake name -  _and the gods knew the man wouldn’t know an emotional anchor if he tripped over it and fell on his arse_  - but Molly was a little thrown, as the picture oscillated nauseatingly. “Can we try someone else? …Beauregard?”

“Surname? It’s not  _necessary_  exactly, but it would help, given the circumstances….”

When Molly just shrugged helplessly, Vax rolled his eyes. But a moment later, he was letting out a sound of triumph as the threads twisted into place, a haze of cool blue falling away to reveal the same scene as before, but this time in crisp detail.

Molly stared down at the tree trunk still laid half across road and the frozen wheel tracks in the dirt, his heart in his throat suddenly. He was aware of Vax moving closer to peer down too, as the view of the vision came up from the road, moving to the side.

Molly took in a breath as he saw four figures standing there, outlined in the misty orange glow from the dying of a fire.

( _Scorched brush, he remembered, debris caught alight by one of Caleb’s fire spells, spilling heat and smoke into the frigid air_.)

Even from behind he could see their weariness, the dirt and blood that covered them. Beau and Caleb stood stiffly with Nott and Keg between them, Keg leaning weary and wounded on Beau’s arm while Nott clung nervously to the hem of Caleb’s coat, her hands bunched nervously in the tattered fabric.

They were all looking down at something on the ground before them, that Molly couldn’t see.

“Closer” he breathed. As though the threads themselves could understand him, the vision rippled once more, and suddenly the perspective was moving, coming up as though peering between Beau and Caleb, over Nott and Keg’s heads to the sight they were all looking down at.

Molly stared. And stared.

“…Fuck,” he muttered, at long last. “What a mess.” He wrapped his arms around himself, fingers twisting reflexively in the layers of cloth on his sleeves. He couldn’t help but stare; in the vision, his body’s eyes were open, as though to meet his own gaze, yet empty, horribly empty. Staring blankly up at the smoky sky, unblinking as the snow swirled down onto his face. There was blood staining his lips and nose, as well as a dark stain seeping into the only clean patch of white of his shirt where the red eye had bled, that final time.

And then there was that wound in the centre of his chest, a great glistening tear in his flesh, dark with congealing gore. The whole front of him below it was soaked with blood, dark in the flickering remains of the firelight.

He felt Vax’s hand at his elbow, neither cool nor warm, somehow not wholly corporeal, yet somehow grounding. At the same moment, the vision’s perspective came upwards again, to the faces of the four standing around him; they were just standing there, frozen in the moment as the snow swirled around and their breath gusted out in fast clouds of steam, as though no one knew what to do. None of them were even meeting each other’s eyes, as the horrible silence pressed in.

“Well?  _Do_  something!” Molly found himself exclaiming, waving his hands emphatically at the screen of woven threads. Beau’s clothes were scorched, and Keg was bleeding from the head, just letting the blood run down her face, eyes hollow and dark in the dim light. Even Nott was just standing there, loose-limbed and shocked, her wide eyes glowing like lanterns in the darkness. Nott, with her quick fingers and her perpetual sharpness, standing there in unguarded shock, her nose bleeding all over her mask. He gritted his teeth, shouting at the screen again. “Drink a bloody healing potion! Loot my body, you dumb fucks! I’ve got a bunch of good stuff! It’s not like I need it anymore!”

“Hey…” Vax laid a hand on Molly’s arm. “They can’t hear you…”

“I fucking  _know_  they can’t” he found himself snapping, angry suddenly without knowing exactly why. He wiped tears off his face, the bunched cloth of his sleeve rubbing savagely at his skin. At the very least it apparently didn’t pass right through, as he had half expected it to. He dragged his hands down his face, darting a glance at Vax. “Ugh. Sorry, it’s just…”

“Yeah” said Vax. “Yeah, I know it can hurt. Looking back at the people you left behind.”  _You don’t have to_ , came the unspoken implication.  _We can stop this right now_.

Molly gritted his teeth. “You’re one to talk.” He tore his gaze away from Vax, staring determinedly back at the screen. Some part of him didn’t want to see, but the larger part was filled with a sickening mixture of worry for his friends and morbid curiosity. He watched, as the others knelt around him, arguing in clipped, pained voices as they went through his things; their words barely registered in his mind, but their voices were achingly familiar, both a comfort and a torture, with the knowledge that they were worlds away.

Beau worked quickly, almost mechanical in her motions as she took the important things off his body. He watched her take the cards from his pocket, curling her lip derisively and looking at them like something rotting, something poisonous in themselves, before - to his surprise - slipping them in her pocket. They kept his Summer’s Dance, and Caleb got the periapt. Good, thought Molly. He needed the protection.  _Always was too squishy. Wouldn’t want to lose another_. 

Caleb was digging in the ground with his cat’s paw, and before long they were toasting with Nott’s never-ending cheap whiskey, the stuff that tasted like it could strip paint but burned in a way that was almost good, on nights like this. Molly wished he could have some too; he never had liked funerals.  _Never knew how to behave_.  _Never would, now_. 

 _“Long may he reign_.” The words, repeated as they toasted, caught his attention.  

Caleb’s voice, cracked and weary. “Shine bright, circus man.”

And then, an earthen cat’s paw, sending earth into that yawning pit in the ground. Molly couldn’t see it from the perspective of the vision, but his mind was suddenly full of the thought of earth over his eyes, covering his mouth, weighing heavy on his chest; in that moment, he didn’t know if it was mere speculation or a memory, but a low, involuntary Infernal curse escaped him. He had to bite down on the skin at his wrist to keep from letting out a choked-off scream.

And just like that, it was over. He watched as Caleb, with some effort, hammered a heavy stick into the frozen ground, hanging Molly’s coat over it. A bright flag in a landscape of shadows, snow swirling down from heavy clouds that veiled the stars and the moon.

He watched, as they gathered the remaining horses, and set off along Glory Run Road.

“Hey….hey. Hey.” Another touch, to Molly’s shoulder this time. “You’re shaking.”

Molly blinked, snapping back to the present to meet Vax’s gaze, peering at him with something like concern.

“….Huh?” said Molly. Vax was right, he realised: he was trembling so hard his teeth were chattering and the jewellery on his horns clinking like a set of chimes, claws digging sharp little welts into….well, whatever he had that passed for skin, here. Forcibly, he stilled his shaking. He forced himself to swallow. “Show me….the others” he said.  _Of course_. He could see anyone from here, he realised, not just the people who had just buried him. Anyone in the world, and he could only think of one person right now. “Ya-Yasha.” Her name was hard to get out; the force of missing her, of wanting her there right now, hit him in the chest. “Yasha” he forced out. “And Jester and Fjord. They got kidnapped,” he clarified, when Vax raised a confused eyebrow. “We were on our way to save them from that fucking bastard…” He broke off, voice trembling with anger. He realised his tail was lashing as it accidentally caught on one of Vax’s wings, and forced it to be still. He had to be practical, he knew. Surely that was what the others were doing. He couldn’t lose his head.

( _Well, it hadn’t been that at least_ , he thought bleakly.  _That would be a shit way to go. A great big bloody hole torn through his chest was maybe not so bad_. He resisted the urge to let out the slightly hysterical laugh bubbling in his chest.)

“Here,” Vax was saying, bringing him back again. “I’ve…found your Yasha.”

There was a subtle note of worry in his voice that made Molly almost not want to look, but he did anyway.

He almost - almost - wished he hadn’t.

For there she was, his dear Yasha, his best friend, her arms and legs shackled as she beat furiously at the bars of the cage she was being kept in. Her hands and arms were bloody, but still she kept beating them against the metal, heedless of the pain. (He couldn’t help but think of when he had sat with her as Ornna washed her wounds, those early days after the circus found her, when she came out of her silence and flew into a rage with fearful speed, unpredictable as a wounded beast, falling on the bandits that had attacked them on the road. He’d taken her hand and talked to her, calmed her down and told her that the threat was gone, until she quieted enough for Desmond to heal her with a lullaby infused with the taste of magic. Molly had been a little afraid of her himself, at the very beginning, but wasn’t afraid of a little blood, and he  _knew_ , he recognised someone needing a kind word or simply someone to sit beside them in peaceful silence.)

Yasha was silent in the vision he was looking now, too, but still she screamed; her screams didn’t make a sound, though, not even in the strange way that sounds came through the threads, as though echoing in the mind itself. “Why…why can’t I hear her?” he asked Vax.

“I don’t know. We should be able to….” he paused. “Oh. I think….”

“What? Think what?”

He sighed. “I think the problem is on the other end. I think…I think there’s some sort of spell on that place. To keep it silent.”

Molly caught his breath, imagining screaming and no sound coming out. “The others will have a job finding them, then” he said, more to himself than to Vax. He squinted at the vision: now, he could see that Yasha was in some sort of caged cart, which was moving along a dark road, not too dissimilar from the Glory Run Road.

 _But the carts they had seen hadn’t had cages, so how could it be_ …? Molly frowned, pinching the bridge of his nose, wishing he knew more about how magic worked. The thought that he could ask Caleb or Jester came automatically, followed immediately by the realisation.

 _Oh yeah. He was dead, wasn’t he_. So asking Caleb or Jester anything was going to be difficult.

Still, the moment that he thought about Jester, the vision shifted again, the perspective swivelling in half a circle to take in the other side of the cramped cage. There were two figures there, against the wall; Jester’s hands were bound up at a painful-looking angle behind her to the wall, and she was crying out silently at Yasha, noiseless tears running down her dirt-streaked face. Against her shoulder, Fjord was slumped, lolling forward semi-conscious; partially coagulated blood ran down his face from a messy wound above his eye. Jester was struggling against her bonds, and he realised she must be trying to reach Fjord, so she could heal him with a touch. But her efforts were vain; there was no escaping the heavy iron chains binding her. As he watched, she switched to muttering, her lips moving in a soundless prayer.

Molly couldn’t watch any longer; he shut his eyes, turning away. He should watch, he thought; he felt a stab of guilt. But he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes just then, to see them like that a moment longer. Not that it did much good, as their faces, their wounds, their silent screams, still lingered in the dark behind his eyelids.

This was what he had died to trying save them from. Which…he was beginning to come to terms with now. Maybe. Or rather, he would be if not for the fact that he had failed.  _It hadn’t even made one fucking bit of difference_. Yes, he had probably saved Beau from Lorenzo - and he would do it again - but what difference would that make, when that man was still alive? Molly thought about the others; they would try again, he knew, knowing what he did of them.  _Stubborn bastards, the whole lot, and idiots when it came to self-preservation_. (And what did that make him, Molly wondered.) But then they would die too. At least they would if Lorenzo was feeling particularly merciful. He didn’t think death was what was in store for Yasha, Fjord and Jester.

He realised his hands were covering his face; he could feel his thoughts spiralling, his breathing growing fast and ragged.  _Why did he even need to breathe? Wasn’t he dead?_  It was unfair, was what it was, that there was still so much fear to be had here, and so little comfort.

“Shhh. Shhh… I think you’ve seen enough, for now” came Vax’s voice, from behind him. Suddenly, Molly felt arms come up around him, from the back. For a moment he struggled in his panic, only to realise that the touch was a gentle one, a quiet, enfolding hug. There was a ruffle of feathers, and Molly opened his eyes gingerly to find Vax’s wings had come up to encircle him too, surrounding him with a soft black barrier between him and the screen of woven threads. Vax sighed, beside his ear, leaning into the hug. “…Shit” he said. “I’m sorry. That’s…a lot.”

Molly felt his breathing slow down, just a bit. “…Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

They stood like that for a long, long time: or at least, Molly thought it was a long time, though time itself didn’t feel like it meant much here. But it allowed the blazing fear to ebb away to be replaced by….something colder, and sadder. But quiet, in the absolute silence that surrounded them.

Finally, Vax spoke. “You okay?”

Molly huffed out a grudging laugh. “What d'you think?”

Vax sighed. “Looking into the world, from here, it can break a person” he said. “I should have warned you, before I let you see. I’m sorry.”

Molly waved his hand, wearily. “Wouldn’t have changed anything. In fact, if anything I tend towards being  _more_  likely to want something, if someone says it’s bad for me.”

“….Gods, you remind me so much of several people I used to know.”

“Impossible and intolerable. I am, and always have been, unique.” He winked, even though Vax couldn’t see his face.  _This, at least_ …this type of banter came easily, was familiar. That made it a little easier.

Vax pulled away from him, folding his wings and coming around so he was facing Molly again, giving him a look. “Yes, well, that’s apparently also true” he said. “But I’m sorry all the same.”

“….Thanks. I think” said Molly. He drew in a steadying breath and looked back at the screen, now swirling once more with formless, random colours and shades, never quite alighting on any one recognisable image. He squared his shoulders, looked up and met Vax’s eye. “So. Strictly against your better judgement and all… when do I get to look again?”


	3. (Can't) sleep when you're dead

Molly stared down at the screen of threads, where he could see a view of a little rocky hollow. The figures curled up there had not moved for at least an hour; even Keg, who was on first watch, had barely shifted where she sat. All she had done in the last hour was to roll a cigarette and light it, cursing softly as she failed a few times in the wind, even with the shelter of her hand. Once she got it alight, she had sat staring over the bleak hillside with its tiny orange glow lighting her face, inhaling and blowing out smoke until it was finished and she had stubbed it out on a rock. After that, she had simply watched in the silence, barely moving, as the others slept on behind her. 

They had met the firbolg woman called Nila just after they had buried him, Molly had gathered. He had missed the part where they had actually _met_ her – why was Caleb in the woods on his own anyway? That seemed foolhardy at best, Molly must have missed something - but he was glad she was there with them. He watched now, as Beau tucked her head under Nila’s chin in her sleep, as Nila’s other arm went around Caleb. Nott was curled up half inside Caleb’s coat while he was wearing it, and Molly thought she looked a little squashed in the small gap between Caleb and Nila, but at least they would all be warm.

He was glad about that: he remembered how bitingly cold it had been the previous night. How odd, he thought, that only one night ago – by the living world’s timeline, the only way he could measure it with the odd and fluid way time seemed to pass here – that _he_ had been the one held in the middle of the group as they slept, a messy pile of body heat and elbows and snoring. Beau sleepily jabbing him in the cheek with a sharp finger in the middle of the night to complain that his horn was digging into her shoulder. The slightly mildewed smell of Caleb’s coat, and the whispery way that Nott mumbled in her sleep sometimes; she was doing it now, in the vision.

Caleb shaking them all awake when his alarm had been set off by the caravan of carts coming up the road, in the chilly hours before dawn. The breaths coming from all their mouths in clouds as they had gotten ready for their ambush in tense silence. He remembered wondering if the mist from their breath in the cold air could possibly give them away.

It simply hadn’t occurred to Molly then that each of those living breaths would be a step in a countdown, a clock ticking away to his very last.

He remembered the contrast between cold and warmth, and it scared him how quickly that had faded for him; already, after only one day in whatever this place was, it felt like a distant memory, his recollections of sensations of the living world as bright and strange as those very first days in it he that could remember at all.

Beau turned over in her sleep as he watched, making Nila’s ear twitch gently, and Keg moved for the first time in an hour, turning to glance over the little sleeping pile. Molly could only half see the expression on her face, and couldn’t begin to interpret it. But it was then that he realised, that he been watching this for quite a while now. He blinked a few times, drawing back a little and backing into Vax, behind him like a silent shadow.

Molly turned to him and sighed. “You really don’t realise how much of their lives people spend _sleeping_ until you die and don’t have to anymore, do you?”

Vax gave a soft laugh. “You’re right… and yes, I definitely came to that realisation in almost exactly the same way as you are right now.” He patted Molly almost affectionately on the shoulder. “Welcome to the afterlife, I guess.”

“Huh.” Molly folded his arms, looking back at the vision. His heart was aching, with how much he wanted to be a part of that pile of sleeping bodies; he felt frustrated, bereft with the lack of touch and warmth and everything else the living world had given him to fill in the yawning chasms of fearful blankness in his heart, or at least help him edge around them. Other times he had felt like this, he would have headed straight for the nearest brothel and into the bed of the most interesting-looking person they had, or got high, or got in a fight with someone who deserved it, or drunk himself into a stupor, or preferably more than one of those.

But now there was just him, and Vax, and all these gods-damned fate threads. Already, he was beginning to feel like the mangy, half-starved Marquesian lion pacing in the too-small cage he had seen in one of the towns the circus had visited. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, clasping tight to his right horn so the ridges pressed into his palm hard enough to cause a flash of pain. Sensation at least, if not much of it. He turned and looked at Vax.

“I’m bored of watching my friends sleep. Any chance we can take a peek at someone else?”

“…Within reason, yes” said Vax, carefully.

“Really?” asked Molly. “There are limits on this thing?” he grinned. “Please, tell me what they are… I always like to know my limits, so I can celebrate when I surpass them.”

That got a slight smile. “Well” said Vax, tilting his head in amusement. “When I say there are limits, I don’t mean that there are limits to what you can _see_.” He gestured to the threads. “With the power the Raven Queen has given me, I can show you just about anything. But…” he frowned. “You know, I feel like I should warn you… there are things you might not want to see.”

“You don’t know me.”

Vax sighed. “Look. The thing about this place is you can’t _change_ things. It can be…” his eyes seemed to go far away for a moment, “…difficult.”

Molly put his hands on his hips. “Those are the ones I want to see most.”

Vax rolled his eyes. “Well okay, to be fair, that’s exactly what I would have said to that too. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“…I mean, I don’t even know _who_ I would say that to. There’s only you and me here.”

“…Okay, fuck it. What do you want to see?”

“I want to see the others. Yasha, Fjord and Jester, again.”

Vax only hesitated a moment before nodding and twisting and pulling at the threads; the picture was quicker and cleaner to change this time, but for a moment, Molly thought that there was only blank emptiness. Then, he realised there was just almost no light in the scene before him.

He took in a breath; once again, he could see Fjord and Jester, but now they seemed to be in some sort of dungeon, deep underground; in the corner, there was a bulky, slumped silhouette that had to be an unconscious Yasha. She was breathing, he saw with great relief; it was just a slight rise and fall of her side, but she was still alive. He doubted they’d want her dead, but she must have fought too hard, Molly thought. If she was the Yasha he knew, he must have caused them too much trouble. He hoped they hadn’t hurt her too much, but perhaps unconsciousness was a mercy: he knew that if given the chance she would not stop fighting until she was dead, broken and dismembered and unable to fight anymore.

In the foreground, he could see Fjord and Jester again; in the dim light, he could see that as Fjord’s hands were bloodied to the wrists, his dark green hands with their lighter palms turned black with bruises. Molly could see him try to summon the falchion, which then clattered to the ground out of his limp fingers, as Fjord let out a whimper of pain; he did it again, and someone’s hand came and grabbed his wrist, pushing it down to the ground so that a booted foot could stamp of his fingers, wringing a strangled scream from him. Molly sucked in a sharp breath; they must have realised long ago that there was only one way they could disarm a man who could summon his weapon to his hand at will, and that was by breaking his hands. He could only imagine the pain of that; Molly had broken two of his fingers falling off a wall once, and it had hurt like nothing else. At least before it had been healed by a local hedge witch and the weird sharp-smelling potion she had given him, which had both healed him a little, and, more importantly, sent him into a soft, buzzing dreamscape the colour of cornflowers for a few extremely pleasant hours.

Fjord had nothing like that, nothing to distract from the pain. Jester, beside him, also had fresh blood on her face, and as he watched, her mouth opened in a tearing stream of curses in Infernal, directed at someone standing just out of view. Even Molly winced to hear them; he hadn’t known that silly, loving, gentle-hearted Jester, with her iridescent sparks of healing magic and her lollipops and her sweet giggle, had it in her to _scream_ like that. He recognised those curses; they were the ones from the depths of the Nine Hells that most tieflings kept close in their hearts and guarded as a fearful secret, a burning rage and a depth of damnation that most feared to even touch, lest they burn up themselves.

And yet here was Jester, screaming them at the top of her lungs, in the darkness of her cell. He’d spoken Infernal with her before, of course he had, but mostly it was private jokes, laughing behind the others’ backs and coming up with silly names for people they met that were lost in translation into Common. Even when she used it in battle, her curses had never been like this before. He would have been impressed, if he wasn’t so deeply shaken by it.

They were all so different from how they had been a few days ago, he thought. The others too. It was odd, to remember the drinking contest in Hupperdook, dancing with Nott while Jester helped a sad, stumbling Caleb to bed. Himself, experimenting with a power he didn’t understand, to try to prevent Beau’s hangover. Kiri and the Schuster children, flowers and fireworks and his friends’ cheeks shining with bright, happy tears.

And now Jester was screaming, and the others were grieving and in pain, and he was… well, dead.

“That tiefling…” Molly was shaken out of his thoughts once more by Vax’s voice. To his surprise, Vax was staring at the screen too. “I thought I recognised her in the other vision, but now I’m sure.”

“…What?”

“I _know_ her” said Vax slowly, his brow furrowing. “Oh! Yes, that’s it. I saw her at the temple of the Raven Queen.”

Molly blinked. “…The one in Zadash?”

“Oh, was that where it was?” said Vax. “Well, yes, I suppose so.” He was still staring at the screen, a hand reached out a little. “I heard something, in the living world. A voice that sounded… almost familiar, a while ago. And I didn’t see anyone on the threads, so I thought I might be wrong. I went out from the temple in the form of a raven, to make extra sure. I guess I must have made a mistake though, because it wasn’t… someone I knew… it was her.” He turned to Molly, looking agrieved. “I’m sorry. That’s probably not very helpful right now.”

“No the fuck it’s not” agreed Molly, breathing out. He pressed his eyes closed, then opened them again. “Wait. You can just _do_ that? Walk around in the form of a raven?”

Vax shrugged. “Sometimes. For a little while, in little ways, yes.”

“…Can _I_ do that…?” At least that way he’d be able to feel the wind in his feathers. Though he’d rather be a peacock than raven, if that was possible.

But Vax shook his head. “You…probably can’t. Sorry.” Vax looked at his hands, a little sadly Molly thought. He could see some light scars across the knuckles and the fingers, slightly silver in the dim light. “I’m not just an ordinary dead spirit, anymore. My Queen made me… something else.”

“…Dare I ask what?”

“You can ask, but I can’t really answer” said Vax, with a shrug.

“Did she swear you to secrecy, or something?”

Vax chuckled. “Nothing so dramatic. I just don’t know myself.”

“…Did you choose to be this?”

Vax seemed to consider this for a moment. “Depends on what you mean by _choose_.”

“…Yeah, so, that sounds like a no to me.”

“You don’t know the whole story. I’d do it again.”

Molly had no idea how to answer that, so there was a short, rather awkward silence. Silence was even more agonising of course; he wondered if he’d offended Vax in some way. He wondered if he cared. He tugged at a strand of his hair again, turning back to the vision of Jester and Fjord. He closed his eyes; he felt guilty, as though he should be watching, but he didn’t think he could take much more of this. Especially when there was precisely fuck all he could do to help. Molly ground his teeth. “Show me someone else” he demanded. “Show me…show me Gustav. Gustav Fletching. He’s probably in Trostenwald right now.”

“…Okay.”

The threads came together, on a picture of another cell. This one was quiet though, with the warm light of a dim lantern filtering in through the tiny, barred peephole in the door. There was a figure, asleep on the bench, a hand flung over the side of it. He could see Gustav’s face, painfully familiar, with his hair straggling across it, a little longer than when Molly had parted from him. He felt both sadness and intense relief: Molly missed the circus, sometimes even more than he missed the Mighty Nein, and Gustav had been there from the beginning, had helped him and been at his side for as long as he could remember.  Seeing him locked up hurt, but in comparison to the previous visions Molly had seen, it was oddly calming. At least Gustav was probably safe in that cell of his. He had to give thanks for that much at least.

But even that scene seemed to silent, too motionless now. “Show me the others” he found himself demanding. “Bo, Ornna, and Toya. I need to know that they’re alright.”

“I don’t know if…”

“ _Please_.” he let out his breath. “…Please, you said I could see whoever I wanted.”

Vax shrugged, fiddling with the threads for a little while longer. “All right.” Finally, a picture formed; a grassy hillside at night, with the circus tents set up. Ornna and Bo were at the door of one of them, speaking in low voices as they looked up at the stars above their heads. Toya was asleep in Bo’s arms, sprawled across one of his strong shoulders. Someone had braided flowers into her hair. Molly let out his breath at the sense of peace that came from seeing them like that, on a hillside at night somewhere in the south, with the wind blowing ripples into the shadowed grass under the unclouded stars.

But it wasn’t enough; he could see anyone, anyone in the world, he realised. “Show me….show me someone else” he said. “Someone who isn’t sleeping. Can we skip ahead to daytime?”

Vax gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, I can’t just make time speed up for people in the living world.”

“What time _is_ it, anyway?”

“In your continent…” Vax leaned sideways and plucked a few threads in quick succession, leaning his head to the side as though to try and catch some harmonic vibrations that Molly couldn’t hear. “It’s about one or two in the morning.”

“Not very accurate. I have a friend who could do better, just like _that_.” He snapped his fingers; funny how Caleb always knowing the exact time had become something they had all so quickly come to take for granted.

“…That sounds unlikely. Also, uncalled for” said Vax. “My brother-in-law makes clocks that run to the second, but I don’t like to, you know, brag about it.”

Molly began to pace. “Ugh…still too many hours to go…” he ran his fingers through his hair. He had often thought before that the night was the most interesting time of the day, but that was before he had died and had to sit through eight uninterrupted hours of everyone else sleeping through it.He didn’t feel tired though; somehow, he knew that sleep would not be possible here. Doubtless something to do with being a disembodied consciousness that he didn’t understand. “What do you do all the time?” he turned to Vax. “You watch your family, right?” he needed a distraction, and this one seemed good enough. “Can you show me them, again?”

Vax stared at him for a long, long time. “…It _is_ daytime in Tal’Dorei. And you look like you could use some cheering up” he said, softly. And then, “you know what? Yeah. Fuck it. Okay. Let me show you my home.”

 


	4. Solace, and how to take it

“What are you doing over there?” Molly stood on his tiptoes, craning over the top of Vax’s wing to try to get a better look. “Can you not find them?”

“I can find them just fine.” Vax made a face, tilting his head as he listened to the threads, to sounds that Molly could not hear. “Just…checking. Past experience, you know.”

Molly could have sworn he saw Vax blush a little. Naturally, he was instantly intrigued. “Ooh. Care to elaborate?”

“Mmmmm…” Vax’s brow furrowed. “Well, let’s just say that though I love my sister and my brother-in-law very much, there are certain parts of their married life that I definitely _don’t_ want to stumble in on.”

Molly found himself laughing; not something that he had thought he would have cause to do here, but welcome. “Experience, you say?”

“ _Bitter_ experience, that I do not want to talk about ever again” said Vax grimly.

“Being dead sounds like a trip.”

“Oh, you can’t even imagine.” Vax raised his head. “Right, everyone’s decent. So far as I can tell.” He shuffled to the side, to let Molly duck under his wing, nudging him forward.

“…Wait, though” said Molly, frowning himself. “What if…” he wasn’t sure how to articulate this; distraction was normally exactly what he wanted, but now, for the first time in his life – or not, as the case may be – he wasn’t so sure. “What if…something happens, while I’m here? Back with my people? What if I miss it?” He had a feeling, a strange, bone-deep dread about _if something happened, and he was_ _n’_ _t there to witness it_ …

Vax seemed to understand immediately. “Oh. I can help with that.” He reached behind Molly, pulled out another thread from the mass behind him, where before they had been watching the Mighty Nein sleeping. It came easily, loosening under only a little pressure. Vax made a loop of it, wrapped it around again, then a third time.

Then he took Molly’s hand and slipped it around his wrist, pulling the loop tight and making a loose knot on top.

“There” said Vax. “If anything…significant happens, you’ll feel it. Happy now?”

Molly looked at the loop around his wrist, strange textureless fibres that, on closer inspection, were not so much grey as a blurred, shifting mass of _every_ colour, strange and jarring against the familiarity of his skin and his tattoos. Through the fibres, he found he could feel the connection back to the Mighty Nein, sort of. Like the sounds of a conversation heard through a wall, indistinct and muffled, but reassuringly there. It was a uniquely odd experience, even by his very recently escalated standards for such things. He turned back to Vax, who was looking at him curiously.

“Huh…..thanks.”

“Right. Then, if you’re ready to be distracted, let’s begin…”

Over the next…well, he didn’t know exactly how long it was, a sensation he was starting to grow accustomed to – Molly watched with a steadily growing ache in his heart.

Through a lot of it though, he watched Vax’s face. Vax, who was watching intently as though he couldn’t do this whenever he wanted. He seemed to have almost forgotten that Molly was there as he stared at the faces of the people moving before them, occasionally reaching out a hand only to drop it carefully when he remembered himself.

And what visions they were. Molly frowned as he watched the family that Vax had lost go about their daily lives in front of them; that half-elf lady, his twin sister, laughing in a sunlit hallway, out walking in the woods with, of all things, a fully grown grizzly bear, as calm as you please. Then later, dancing at a ball with a tall, handsome man with white hair, both dressed in bright jewels and elegant tailored silk and velvet.

“Who’s _that_?” asked Molly, unable to restrain himself.

Vax cast him a Look. “My brother-in-law” he said. “Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowki de Rolo the third.”

“Oof. Poor dear.”

“…We call him Percy.”

“I see. Well, your sister has good taste.” Molly stared contemplatively at the two of them dancing, then glanced at Vax under his lashes. “So does he, for that matter.”

Vax rolled his eyes, but bore this with an air of weary resignation before promptly changing the vision to another one.

Other scenes flashed before them; a tall goliath, carrying a gnome man and several (sickeningly cute) gnome children on his shoulders. All of them cheering on another gnome with bright blond hair and armour, who seemed to be engaged in some sort of arm-wrestling contest with a burly half-orc. Then it changed again, and there was a golden-haired man in jewelled armour, fighting some sort of weird giant snake along with several others, one of whom seemed to be suspiciously mechanical-looking. He didn’t have a chance to ask about it though; the vision changed once more, and there was a human man dressed in purple robes, sitting in a comfortable-looking study with a cozy fire, a little crystal glass of wine on the side, casting magic into some sort of mechanism. He watched Vax’s face go very soft as the sun set over a city of flickering lights outside the study, an air of peace hanging heavy all around. Then the threads changed, and there was that woman again, the one with the cloak of leaves that he had glimpsed before standing alone on the clifftop, except this time she was giving a speech in front of a crowd of people. Afterwards, everyone cheered for her, and she stepped down from the dais and talked to each of them, touching their hands.

Somehow, even surrounded by people who clearly loved her, he thought she still looked lonely.

All the while, Molly noticed, Vax seemed more and more drawn in by the visions himself, seeming to barely notice that Molly was there.

Finally, they ended, the threads unspooling back into formless colour.

They stood in silence for a while, and Molly saw that there were tears on Vax’s face. He frowned, watching Vax wipe them hastily away with the back of his hand. At least he had learned that the dead – or whatever Vax was, which was still to be determined – _could_ still cry. That felt like a relief, somehow.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel a curl of something like irritation, possibly another manifestation of that _ache_ somewhere down deep inside him.

“Well,” said Vax. “There they are.”

“…Vax?”

He seemed startled at the sound of his name. As though no one had called him it for a long time and the sound wasn’t familiar anymore. “Yes?”

“Why did you show me all this?”

“Well, I said, didn’t I? You needed a distraction.”

Molly didn’t even try to bite back the sarcasm in his voice. “And you thought that showing me your happy family would be just what I needed?” He thought of his own family, torn and grieving and locked away in the dark, something sour and painful rising. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy for Vax. Or, for Vax as he had been in life. But something had been torn open inside his chest, was the thing. “You really thought that would help?”

Vax raised his hands, palms out. “My family wasn’t always happy, you know. At…at the end, after I died…they were grieving, for a long time. _Well_ , at the very beginning they had to go rescue our other sweet dumb friend from a hell plane, but that’s a different story…” he caught Molly’s look, clearly reining in the impulse to gush about his family. “The point _is_ ” he said hastily, gesturing with the tip of one wing, “…the point is, it got easier for them. Over the years. They’re still hurting, but it’s less now.” That soft look filled his face again. “I only ever wanted them to be happy. And they are, mostly. Yours will be too, in time.”

“…If they survive.”

“If they survive” agreed Vax, perfectly calm.

Molly narrowed his eyes, trying to see beneath Vax’s words. There were several things at war there, he thought. The calm exterior of the guardian of the threads of fate, but beneath it, barely kept in check for the sake of – presumably – professionalism, something indescribably, powerfully mortal, shining through. Aching and bleeding still with love, for a family that lived on without him.

But before he could tell one way or the other, his eyes widened, twitching in sudden alertness.

He had just felt a tug on the thread around his wrist.

Vax seemed to sense it too, at the exact same moment – or maybe even slightly before – Molly did. Their eyes met. “Something’s happening” said Molly.

Vax nodded slowly. “…It’s odd. It’s like someone’s reaching _back_ , just a little bit. Leaning on the boundary.” He tugged gently on the thread at Molly’s wrist. “It happens, sometimes, with some people who’re a little bit more…aware of this side, I guess, than others. I was like that, at the end. But it isn’t necessarily anything to worry about.”

“I don’t really know what that means” admitted Molly. “But please, I need to see them again…”

Vax passed a hand over the blurred nothing on the woven screen in front of them. The threads rearranged themselves, twisting over and under, to form a new picture.

The colours were bright, brighter than those of the other visions. But the scene itself was unfamiliar. A beautiful garden, flowers just slightly blurred by the textural, painterly quality that the threads gave the image. The stems of red daisies, of mallow and buttercups and foxgloves, blue clematis climbing up the wall of a building just out of view, and many others he didn’t recognise, all swaying in a gentle breeze against a vivid, dappled green.

There were things in the grass too, mossy stone, eroded by what must be centuries. Gravestones, he realised, surely gravestones. They were covered in moss and lichen, in every colour he could imagine. It was sunny and bright, the middle of the day.

Molly frowned.

“How long were we…away?” Surely it couldn’t have been hours and hours.

Vax shrugged. “Hard to say. I think…days, maybe?”

“ _Days_?! But…but…”

“Sometimes time doesn’t move…exactly in sync between here and there” said Vax, with a hint of apology in his voice. “I mean, it always moves _forwards_ , at least as far as I’ve seen, but sometimes, when you’re in one vision, you can…” he made a kind of wiggly motion with his hand. “Lose a bit.”

“…I see” said Molly, who didn’t. He didn’t feel great about the idea of losing time, either, but that was something to worry about later. For now, he squinted back at the picture that had formed before them, trying to see if anything had changed.

It hadn’t. There were no people in the vision, the only movement the stirring of the wind in the grass. Molly blinked several times, wondering if he should recognise it. There came that familiar fear, too; was this place connected to him? Or was it connected to the one who had gone before, that stranger who left odd and discomforting flashes of memory scattered around Molly’s mind like so many discarded shoes, just waiting to be tripped over.

He turned to Vax, to see that he was also frowning at the scene before them. “I wonder if - ” he began, but at that moment, there was another movement in the vision: a flash of something bright, and then, standing there in view, was one of the simultaneously oddest and most pleasing-looking people that Molly had ever seen, and that was saying something.

They were tall and gangly and strangely proportioned, with long bright pink hair pooling across one shoulder, softly grey-blue skin that looked as though it had a little bit of a fuzz to it. A firbolg, but not quite like the – admittedly few – others he had met. They were holding a small, stoneware teacup, a little whisp of steam curling upwards.

But the oddest part was, even as Molly and Vax stared, they were _staring right back_.

It was like they were looking _through_ the vision, as though through a pane of clear glass, to the extent that Molly wasn’t entirely sure that this colourful stranger couldn’t see him. Yet, they did not look alarmed, or even particularly surprised, blinking placidly in the dappled sunlight, narrowing vivid purple eyes, long ears twitching with curiosity as they tilted their head, giving something that might have been a very subtle nod of acknowledgement.

Molly exchanged a glance with Vax, who did not look disturbed by this, as much as merely nonplussed. “One of yours?” asked Vax. “Do you know him, I mean?”

Molly shrugged. “Not as far as I know?”

“Well, then. Just a passing stranger with a particularly strong connection to this side, maybe? In which case, I’m afraid it might have been a false alarm - ”

But at that moment, there was another sound, a larger rustling in the bushes behind the curious stranger, who immediately slipped away, into the cool green-shadowed eves of the building just out of the field of view. Even though he couldn’t see them, Molly could feel them waiting there, still and watchful as in front of him he began to hear voices, the tall grasses quivering and shaking as something forced its way into this bright little enclave.

Or rather, some _one_. Or five someones, looking rather the worse for wear, dirty and weary-looking from the road. Their exposed skin was scraped by thorns and all of them had twigs and leaves in their hair.

But it was, unmistakably, Beau, Nott, Caleb, Keg, and Nila. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched them peer gingerly into the grove, Nott taking a swig from her flask and making a dash, only to have her cloak snag on a thorny branch, falling to the ground with a yelp. The rest of them following along behind, picking their way through the graves.

And then, the firbolg with the pink hair was standing in front of them, talking to them. He and Vax watched as they were led into the temple, the vision following along behind.

_Caduceus Clay_ , they heard him introduce himself. A nice, calming name, somehow; actually Caduceus’ whole presence was calming, if a little weird, but it made Molly’s heart ache with something else again to see a bit of the tension leave his friends, relaxing a little for the first time in…well, he didn’t know how many days.

He listened as they talked back and forth, filling Caduceus in on what had happened; the cracking of their voices as they talked about – well, about him – made him bite down with one sharp incisor on his lip, face crumpling, hearing Vax’s feathers rustling with concern, stepping just a fraction closer. They stood there together, listening in silence, as the Mighty Nein – such as they were – talked about going to find Lorenzo, to hunt him down. There was anger there, filling all of them. Making them reckless.

The thought scared him. But then, who was he to talk?

Finally, they got up from the table, ready to leave. Caduceus was going with them, it seemed; _good_ , Molly thought. They needed a decent healer more than anything.

Still, he was afraid at the thought of them going into that place. He couldn’t help but think of what he’d seen, of Jester, Fjord and Yasha, chained and hurting. They needed to be saved, but Lorenzo’s face – Molly’s last sight with his living eyes – swum in his mind’s eye like a threat.

_Don’t let them be harmed_ , he prayed silently to whoever was listening. He hoped it was the Moonweaver, but honestly anyone would do at this point. _Don’t let them come here, just yet_.

Maybe this Wildmother that Caduceus worshipped would hear him, he thought; her presence seemed to be everywhere in this strange, bright place, if anyone’s was.

As they passed under the overgrown gates of the verdant garden of graves, Caduceus was the last to leave. And for a moment, just a moment, he turned back, and up, looking directly into the vision, directly, it seemed, at Molly.

And he smiled.


End file.
